Contributor: Josh Hall
Two weekends ago, the World Series of Fighting crowned their first lightweight champion when highly touted prospect Justin Gaethje defeated Richard Patishnock via 1st round TKO. The WSOF is looking for a higher profile opponent for their new champion in his first title defense, and the first name suggested by matchmaker Ali Abdelaziz was fellow undefeated LW Nick Newell. Newell has been on the main card for both of his WSOF fights, winning both by 1st round submission, and he has ten first round finishes in his eleven fight career. With a resume like that the booking seems like it would be a no brainer, but putting Newell in a fight never is.
Nick Newell was born a congenital amputee, with his left arm stopping just below the elbow. Despite the obvious disadvantage he faces every time he steps in the cage, Newell has been successful and won his fights in dominant fashion. This is a wonderful story, but also a practical problem for every organization that he fights in. It is not easy to find fighters that want to take on a one handed opponent, as many view it as a no-win situation. There is a stigma that comes with losing to Newell that doesn’t exist for any other opponent. It isn’t fair or based on anything to do with his in cage performance, but many people will never see him as anything more than a one handed man before a fighter. It’s a shame too, because these people miss out on the chance to appreciate his uncanny ability to build his skill set around his lack of a limb.
The purpose of this is to shed some light on the things that “Notorious” does in the cage that sets him apart from other fighters, but to appreciate that you have to look at where he started. Ben Popper wrote a great piece on Newell recently that touched on this, and if you haven’t already you should definitely give it a read.
Popper goes into the early struggles for Newell as a high school wrestler, beginning as a 90 pound freshman whose first match was a loss to a girl who was the only other person in his weight class. He ended his first year in high school with a 2-22 record but persevered on, eventually setting a state record for wins with 53 in his senior season. This doesn’t necessarily mean a great deal in regards to his technical ability inside an MMA cage, but it shows the mental strength that is often the missing ingredient for failed prospects in the sport.
The entire story of Nick Newell is an amazing one, but as a result of that and his physical appearance some of his technical skills seem to go by in large unnoticed. This is also due to the fact that the techniques he employs are quite a bit different than what you see from other high level practitioners of MMA. This is obviously by design and done out of necessity, and his unorthodox tactics have caused problems for everyone who has stepped in the cage against him. Here are some of the things Newell does that make him stand out as a fighter and turn a major competitive disadvantage into a nightmare to matchup with for each of his opponents.
The most obvious thing that jumps out at me immediately is how Newell has used his lack of a left hand as a way to gain a significant leverage advantage in the submission game, with the most notable example of this being his fight with Eric 
Reynolds for the XFC LW title. Reynolds was by far the toughest opponent “Notorious” had faced at the time, and he was one of the few people to seeking out a fight with the congenital amputee. “It’s a Wrap” made a terrible decision, as he was totally overmatched by the stronger and quicker Newell, who finished the fight via rear naked choke just over a minute into the fight.
Quick submission wins happen all the time in the sport, but the Reynolds/Newell fight showed that the hours of training choke defense in BJJ goes straight out the window when the person applying the hold only has one arm that stops around the elbow. Normally when a fighter slips the right arm under the neck in a rear naked choke, the way to defend is to peel off the left hand, breaking the grip on the hold and alleviating the pressure on their neck. If you look at the 1:07 mark in the video below, you will see Reynolds immediately reach for said hand control, but with no left hand to grab he can only try to peel off the opposite hand that is locked onto Newell’s left elbow. This simply will not work, and he is forced to tap out quickly when he realizes he has no way out.
There is more regarding the submission game of Newell, but to stay in the aforementioned fight with Reynolds you see another shining example of Nick using his unique build to his advantage. If you look 38 seconds into the video, Reynolds throws a left body kick and Newell uses that to immediately close the distance and initiate a body lock, quickly taking the back from a standing position. Many fighters will look for the big belly to back suplex from there, but it is extremely difficult to get the necessary leverage to finish the throw. For Newell however, it is much easier because instead of locking hands where there is going to be some open space and less leverage, he simply locks his right hand up on his left elbow and uses the increased leverage from the tighter waist cinch to send Reynolds flying with ease. If you look at the 45 second mark you see the grip that he uses clearly and can get a great look at the execution on the throw.
While looking for all the tape I could find on Nick I came across a no-gi BJJ match he had against Nova Uniao black belt Daniel Almeida from the 2010 UFC fan expo. Almeida is a legit high level BJJ competitor and has fought in MMA at middleweight, so it wasn’t exactly an even matchup by any means. Almeida uses his strong base and technique to defeat Newell 17-0 on points, but the final score doesn’t tell the whole story. Despite being very green (Newell was only 3 fights into his MMA career at this point) Nick constantly worked from his back for sweeps and despite being in a couple of bad positions stayed very composed and never was in serious danger of being tapped. Brendan Schaub could take some notes from Newell on how an overmatched competitor should go on the mat if he chooses to compete out of his league. Nick was constantly working and didn’t hesitate to look for submissions on the bigger, more seasoned fighter including dropping for heel hooks and throwing flying armbar attempts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raVwkMfKI0E
Aside from the positive things I noticed in his loss in BJJ, it made me realize how well Newell uses the cage in his MMA fights. On an open mat in a grappling only scenario it is much harder for him to control range against legit competition, but he solves that problem in MMA with proper positioning that allows him to use the cage to limit his opponent’s movements so that he can get into the clinch. Once he can get an opponent’s back up against the cage all of his different ways he can gain a leverage advantage suddenly come into play.
In his most recent fight Newell took on Sabah Fadai at WSOF 7 and showed exactly how good he has become at dictating the range in his fights. Nick has to be either out of punching range where he can throw kicks with his left leg or in in the clinch. Boxing range is what he must avoid at all times, and he does exactly that against Fadai by using good footwork and an explosive shot to eliminate the opportunity to exploit his lack of a left hand in the stand up. At the 52 second mark of the video below you will see Newell feint a jab with his right hand and immediately change levels to shoot for the takedown. Once he gets ahold of Fadai, he immediately walks him over to the cage, where he is able to utilize a back trip to with his left foot. When Fadai tries to pop back up, Newell controls his left foot with his left elbow, forcing Sabah to put his left hand down for support and leaving his neck exposed. He immediately uses the opening to slap on a standing guillotine, cinching up his right hand yet again on his left elbow in a grip that was not going to be broken.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPKVmgVoGQw
In his WSOF debut Newell used a similar strategy against Keon Caldwell, but he wasn’t able to overwhelm him quite as easily as in the fights I referenced previously. After an early slip Newell is able to immediately initiate a grappling sequence that turns into an entertaining scramble, but it ends with Caldwell’s back against the cage. 50 seconds into the video Nick looks for a double leg and Caldwell uses his left arm to force his weight onto his left side where he has no hand. “Notorious” immediately takes advantage of this mistake and transitions to a single leg, where he has perfect leverage to drag Keon to the mat.
When the fight hits the feet again, Newell opens up with punches and elbows, but he only does so with his opponent’s back 
pinned against the cage. It is the little things like this that are so important with no left hand available for striking defense. Nick has to be extremely opportunistic in his attacks in order to not leave himself open, and he knows when to go back into the clinch to minimize the risk of getting caught. When he does get turned around against the cage for a brief moment he hits a beautiful hip throw to get out of the disadvantageous position.
Newell uses the same feint jab into a level change mentioned earlier to secure a takedown, and finally is able to keep Caldwell down in his full guard. You hear Keon’s corner scream for him to go for a kimura on Newell’s right hand to finally exploit the missing left, but Bas Rutten correctly points out on commentary that this would not be the first time Nick would have seen that, for obvious reasons. He easily defends on his right side and a little bit of space is created in Caldwell’s half guard. When Keon tries to sit up to work a sweep Newell is waiting for him and immediately latches on a guillotine. As has been the result every time he locks one on in a pro fight, the tap out comes almost immediately.
While Newell always prefers to get his fights to the ground where it is a level playing field for him, he has learned how to not get lit up on the feet by right hands. The straight right is always the Achilles Heel of the southpaw, and all right hands are especially dangerous to Nick because of left side being so exposed. The flip side of this coin is it is easy for his opponents to make mistakes and get sloppy because he appears to be so easy to hit. Adam David Mays made this mistake and gave all of Nick’s future opposition reason to think twice before they spam right hands out of position.
In the finishing sequence of their fight Newell defends a takedown and immediately opens up with strikes with Mays backed up against the cage. Instead of looking to circle out of the bad position or properly defend, Mays throws a horribly ill-advised pair of right hands and Newell blasts him with a clean one shot KO with his left knee.
While this fight showed that Newell certainly has the power to win a fight with a standing KO, doing that against an elite striker is a whole other matter. Good strikers with powerful right hands would be, at least on paper, the toughest matchups for him realistically speaking. This is why the potential fight with Justin Gaethje is such an interesting one that absolutely needs to happen. Gaethje hits like a tank and has one of the best right hands in the division, but is definitely hittable himself. He would be a giant leap up in competition for Newell, but Nick has run through enough lower tier competition at this point. Looking past his competition and at what he has actually done in the cage, Newell has proven to be a tactical and opportunistic fighter with incredible finishing ability. He would definitely be the underdog against the WSOF LW champ, but it’s pretty likely he is used to that by now. Being the perennial underdog certainly hasn’t stopped him yet.
-Josh can be reached at [email protected] or @jhall282.
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